Down here at the pawn shop

[Undertoad]

The details of Ron's firing came out. Not only did he ask for a raise, but he told Alan that he was going to find another job. Alan told him that was fine, and he was allowed to continue to work at the shop until he was in a new job and ready to make money.

But, for some reason, Ron could not stand this new situation, where he was going to get out but didn't know when. As Alan asked him to do things around the shop, he started being more belligerent. He started yelling at and insulting customers. Then co-workers noticed that he was slowly taking his things home with him - like his mug, his phone charger, his pictures. In the end he refused to do much at all, and Alan sent him packing.

This also reflects the amazingly high turnover at the shop. I think 6 months to a year is about the average for workers there.

Everyone is currently working 6 days a week. I wonder if Alan is trying to save money by running the shop on fewer people. He has not asked me to work the counter. It could work out well if he wanted to do that while Sammy is temporarily living at my place. (He's the co-worker whose wife destroyed his MacBook Pro.)

Steve has been around a year replacing me, and I think he is showing it. I think it has changed him for the worse, as it was changing me. He seems to be becoming more strained, more annoyed, more mean and more racist.

But he is in a precarious position where half his life support (parents) are moving away in three months. He's looking for a place to live, but he seems to be not all that good at it, and not all that motivated. He has important reasons to stay in the city, but his dreams of a perfect situation are making that difficult.

He says he wants build his own log house, heat it with a wood stove, make it sound-proof, and set up his drums so he can play all day and all night. This is because he is from Maine. We hate to explain to him that these sorts of arrangements don't exist in Metropolis. In Maine, your own log house is the road to cheap living. In Metropolis, your own log house is not designed by engineers and built to code, and so it is verboten. And landlords hate wood stoves and drums.